In a previous blog post, we shared with readers how learning needs to be ENGAGING, EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE. For workplace L&D in particular, today’s managers and trainers face:​

Increased Mobility — Our teams are more mobile and distributed. So it’s hard to get everyone in the same training room. Especially true for multi-branch / multi-geographical organisations.

Reduced Attention Spans — The infamous study that us humans can concentrate for less than 8 seconds, ranking us below goldfish…

Organisations can no longer ‘pre-dump’ our teams with reams of training binders; it will get lost amongst everything else that they need to get up to speed on and daily work responsibilities!

L&D managers are convinced that the best way to train teams is by:

Putting training content online to supplement (NOT replace) face-to-face training. This should be mobile-optimised to be delivered directly to employees’ smart devices.

Making sure training engages the learner for more effective content absorption. Even better if the training is contextual and just-in-time.

That’s where Nano Learning comes in.

What’s Nano Learning? Bite-sized, self-contained training content that is rich-media focused and peppered with knowledge checks to make sure learning has taken place.

Think of Nano Learning as ‘power bars’ that are consumed just before a key task or activity. The learning is contextual, just-in-time, and application-focused. Employees learn what’s needed, do quick assessments to confirm learning, and put their learning into action through the task. The practical application reinforces the learner, and gets the ‘muscle memory’ going.

​So how do we create effective Nano Learning? Do we simply take our existing Powerpoint training decks and chop them up into 15-minute modules?

Did this work for you? Did you get the point of the module? Or were there too many “focus points” that you got lost in the information overload? Were you able to test yourself that you learnt what you were being asked to

The module is indeed short, but we need to do more than keep our Nano Learning modules short.

More than that, we need to keep them focused, and to-the-point. Ideally we should only teach ONE learning point per module.

This 2nd module is short, just like the previous one. But there are several important differences:

(i) This module is to-the-point.(ii) There are knowledge checks to make sure the learner stopped him/herself and reinforced the learning.(iii) There is also good use of infographics, contextually-appropriate pictures and a very short, to-the-point video on how Nano Learning can be created.

In general, the rich media appeals to our learners’ right brains, creating emotional connections that imprint on memories more strongly.

LESS is often MORE: Resist the temptation to load in more and more information. This leads to loss-of-focus, and your effort is wasted.

SHOW; don’t TELL: Spend time sourcing or crafting visually clear media resources, be it infographics that display data or information, or demo videos.

The old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” never goes wrong, as the learner doesn’t need to imagine what wordy descriptions actually mean.

KNOWLEDGE CHECKS: We learn best by testing ourselves continuously. Nano Learning modules that have regular Assessment (be it simple MCQ or Open-ended screens) do this effectively. The learner reinforces his/her learning, and there’s good data for L&D managers.

If you need more help or are resource-constrained, get in touch with us for ArcLab Enterprise, where our Instructional Designers can work with you to help craft your content into effective training. Reach out now.

There is chatter about how grades don’t matter; that perhaps we should move away from awarding marks and grades to our learners. This has been raised in Singapore where we are based, and some other economies.

Critics point to Finland’s much-lauded education system, where the focus centres on learning how to learn, rather than marks and grades. Students in Finland go through a comprehensive academic programme that encourages curiosity, lateral thinking and life skills. A culture of lifelong learning continues throughout adult life, as the individual graduates into the workplace.

Yet ignoring grades misses the point, as GRADES DO MATTER.But perhaps not in the way that we use them now.

Grades are FEEDBACKGrades give feedback to the learner and feedback to the educator.

As aLearner: When I do badly on a test or assessment, it is feedback to me that I did not understand the material well enough. I should go through the material again, maybe seek help from my teacher or trainer. Perhaps I should work harder. Maybe I should give up and look for something else that I am better in.

As an Educator: If the entire cohort does badly for a test, it is feedback to me that perhaps I should relook at the parts that everyone did poorly for. Maybe I should think about covering certain concepts again, think of a different way to explain this part of the material that many in the class/course did not seem to understand.

​It’s no different from sports, where week-in, week-out, athletes and teams compete for a good ‘grade’, which is to beat the opponent. Better sides (like Tottenham Hotspur 😊) win in style, though there’s no bonus grade for exciting play.

Singaporean son Joseph Schooling won the 100m Butterfly gold medal at the 2016 Olympics. He worked hard for his excellent ‘grade’. He turned in the hours, honed his talent through good honest hard work, and swam faster than everyone else.

Joseph’s 2017 ‘grades’ weren’t stellar, with a poor NCAA showing and finishing only 3rd at the World Championships in his pet 100m fly. By Joseph’s own admission, he had put in less than half his pre-Olympic training. It showed in his ‘grade’.

But the poor ‘grade’ was feedback to Joseph, who went back to training hard. The results showed, as he routed the field (which included world-class Chinese, Japanese and Korean swimmers) to win 2 Asian Game gold medals in 2018. His work is not yet done, as he hunkers down for the next World Championships and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.​Joseph Schooling responded to his 2017 ‘bad grades’, worked hard, and got back to the top step of the podium.

Olympic champ Joseph Schooling got an excellent ‘grade’ at the 2016 Olympics. He did poorly in 2017 before working hard to improve his 2018 ‘grade’ at the Asian Games, inspiring kids like the author’s daughter (pictured) in the process | Photo: James

​A world without grades?Now imagine a sporting world with no gold medals. No silver, no bronze. Participation certificates at the Olympics; every athlete returns with the same certificate.

Imagine if the English Premier League doesn’t keep score, and there are no winners and losers. That FIFA gives every World Cup team the same medal. Just for showing up.

Hardly the real world, is it?

The real world doesn’t give us participation prizes just for showing up. The real world gives us grades — constant feedback, whether we like it or not.

CEOs are graded by their ability to strategise, execute and deliver performance. Politicians by their ability to serve the citizenry. Fund managers by their ability to earn above-market returns. Carpenters by the quality of their furniture. Software engineers by the ability to ship working code. Movie Directors by the reception of their movies. Startups by their ability to turn product into business. Each and every one of us by our ability to do our job.

We cannot escape the reality that performance matters. The ‘grades’ we get through the metrics we define and are defined for us, are the feedback to us to keep doing what is working, and to change tack when something’s not turning out so well.

Those who respond to this feedback well, would hopefully turn in better performance (and ‘grades’) at the next opportunity. They should be rewarded more than the ones who did not respond to the feedback.

So it is facetious to tell our children that grades do not matter. Because in so doing, we are not preparing them for life.

Grades SHOULD NOT BE JUDGMENTThe issue with grades right now is how we view them, and how we use them.

Grades DO matter, but grades are not THE ONLY THING that matters.

Singaporeans gripe about the Primary School Leaving Examination (“PSLE”). Currently, each student taking the PSLE is awarded a numerical T-score. This score determines the Secondary school that the student is eligible to enter, as admission is primarily based on the scores of those applying. So the PSLE grade is a first-cut filtering tool.

Singapore’s Ministry of Education recently tweaked the PSLE ever so slightly, where from 2021 onwards, students are not awarded a numerical score but instead are given a grade banding.

It’s a start, but doesn’t go far enough. Now students aren’t sieved down to the individual point, but to the individual grade band.

The primary issue for me and many who think Singapore can do better, is the PSLE is still perceived as a single high-stakes examination.

Do well at the PSLE, enter a top secondary school, and your academic journey (and perhaps career) is laid out for you. Do poorly at the PSLE, and you’re routed to technical education, and the road ahead becomes bumpier than the other kid (though “there are still many paths to success”).

It may or may not be true, but sometimes perception shapes reality. And parents have to bear a large part of this responsibility.What is worse is this warped mindset sometimes carries over to the workplace and shapes hiring practices. And the fixation on grades carries on…

Which is wrong. Good grades should not give a free pass to the learner that one is set for life, nor should bad grades condemn one to failure forever.For what if I was just a late bloomer? And what if I was always good at something else?

How do we do better?

1. Grading right.

​Albert Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree, it will spend its whole life feeling stupid”.

If we take grades for what they are, which is feedback, then the challenge for education policy-makers is how to design grading systems that are appropriate for learners-in-question.

There’s good progress being made already, as education systems are becoming more flexible, with different tracks of learning for different types of learners. But more needs to be done.

This is true for academic learning, as well as learning in the workplace. At work, HR practitioners and line managers need to define the right metrics to ‘grade’ staff. Ultimately it needs to translate to business goals (which staff help organisations to achieve).

In the workplace learning arena where ArcLab operates, we encourage organisations to break training content down into modular pieces, or Nano Learning.

This allows staff to learn in bite-sizes, on-demand. The ‘grades’ given at the end of each learning module is specific to the single learning objective that HR, L&D and line managers have defined together. The employee (and the organisation) knows straightaway whether he/she ‘gets’ the material or not, and how to apply it towards his/her job role.​The ‘grade’ has become what it’s meant to be — feedback.

2. Giving room to fail. Really.

Just as Baseball players get 3 swings before striking out, Racket players get 2 chances at a serve, we can shape our learning systems to give our learners room to fail.

​There is a common saying in the military — we sweat more during training, so that we bleed less during war.

I first met Mr Liang when I was in Primary 5 (6th grade by K-12 standards). It has been *a few* years since, so my memory of Mr Liang has faded with time. But I remember a few things:

Mr Liang, or 梁老师 as we addressed him half the time, was our form teacher and taught us Chinese and Mathematics. This was an atypical combination since in Singapore, Math was taught in English.

So we had this stern-looking man who walked into class every day, and taught us in 2 different languages.

That was amazing because as I understood it, Mr Liang went to a Chinese-medium school. So the Math concepts and terminology he learnt in school was entirely in Chinese. Yet here he was, decades later, imparting knowledge to us in English (decent, by the way).

I also remember how much ‘off-curriculum’ material he introduced to us, with such passion.

​All while his ‘KPI’ in Singapore’s exam-focussed system, must still have been to get us past the exams… so it would have been perfectly rational to have “kept to the syllabus”.

In the 2 years Mr Liang spent with our class, among other things, he transported us to ancient China, and through his eyes we saw the Great Wall being constructed, the unification of the Warring States, the advancement of Chinese society.

We flew with him to witness the beginnings of the universe, as he put the magic into science — introducing us to Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”.

We stood with him at the top of the Mayan / Incan monuments, seeing images of large animals carved into corn-fields, and wondering if they were made by extra-terrestrials.

He also got us to learn, among other things: 唐诗三百首 (300 Tang poems), regaled us with stories of the Arabic origin of the numeral system, sparked our imagination with theories of time-travel, Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions… and many others too numerous to list here.We were all of 11 years old.​In a pre-internet, pre-Google, pre-Youtube, pre-iPhone world, Mr Liang opened our eyes to a brave new world, way bigger than the classroom.

Pre-dating social media, smartphones & digital cameras, this is my only picture of 梁老师 Mr Liang. I have no idea what he was holding in his hand. Was it a precursor of a smartphone? | Photo: James

I have had many teachers in my life, and each left an impact.

But I’ll always remember — this teacher of mine, who with his stories, his passion for knowledge, instilled the love of learning, to read and be intellectually curious, to keep finding out more about the world around us, and working to make things better.“老梁” (as he was affectionately known) taught us to always 跑在时间前面, to run ahead of time, so that our surroundings and those around us would not make us irrelevant. That we should always work hard, think different, do better, rise higher.

​Words that would not be out-of-place today, as our lives, jobs and workplaces are getting disrupted by technology at an ever-increasing pace. In a way, Mr Liang lived it himself, as a Chinese-educated student who later mastered English, at a level that was more-than-competent.

Mr Liang walked the talk. He led the way.

Today, increasing amounts of the content we learn in class are at the tip of our fingers. They are a Google search, a Siri question away.

Yet our teachers, our educators— they continue to be invaluable to our lives. Second only to parents, our teachers are the shapers of our lives and our children’s lives from the earliest years.The best educators inspire us, guide us, nurture us. They impart more than just content and knowledge. They help us make meaning, join the dots, draw our own dots, our own lines, create our own knowledge.

They teach us that most important skill — HOW TO LEARN.

So how can we better support our educators, in the classroom, in the workplace? For there are many Mr Liangs among them. There are various angles, and I’d write more in a future post.​

I’ve long-forgotten the academic subject matter that Mr Liang taught us (though not his specialty “mee goreng” for when we strayed off-course). But his love of the pursuit of knowledge has stayed with me all these years.

I hope that in some small way I have put this love of learning into what I do, through my academic years, my previous career in public service and financial markets, and now our work to empower organisations to create better training.

It would be great to see Mr Liang again. But even if I don’t have this privilege, I will always be grateful for having once been his student.

In this Age of Digital Disruption, organisations need to keep employees’ knowledge and skills current.

For all of us, continuous retraining and upskilling is no longer optional. Not doing so puts us all at risk of our jobs being made obsolete and us being made redundant.

Two key factors have major implications for the way we conduct training in the workplace today, or educate our children in school for that matter.

Knowledge gets outdated much more quickly today.

Our attention spans now average 8 seconds (FYI the average goldfish’s is 9 seconds).

It is ineffective to have 3-hour lectures, where a trainer stands in front of the class and lectures without break, or learners doing anything ‘interactive’.

This is especially true for millennial learners, who no longer have deep fixated attention spans. Instead, millennials “multi-task”, where attention is divided amongst many concurrent activities (aside: our brains don’t actually focus on many different things at the SAME time, but rather, SWITCH between different areas of focus — more on this in a future piece).

It’s also questionable if one-way content delivery in training settings adds much value since there’s already so much knowledge and content that is readily-accessible on the web by learners. In fact, the proliferation of web and digital media also makes it harder to get learners’ attention.

When the ‘competition’ is the latest superhero movie or hit mobile game, the teaching & training profession has its work cut out, to design and deliver knowledge in a manner that at least captures learners’ attention (for those 8 seconds anyway), and more importantly, effect the learning.

We’re not advocating that trainers and educators do nothing more beyond break down 3-hour lectures into 5 minute chunks — lock, stock and barrel. Nano Learning is more than simply putting a shrink ray gun on a classroom lesson and nothing else.

Nano Learning is a PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK where we work through the entire content base and think hard how to package it into bite-sized, interactive modules that best help the learner understand and absorb the content and learning points.

We’ll talk more about the science and pedagogical aspects in a subsequent post, but first let’s think about how we can operationalise Interactive Nano Learning for our organisations.

How do we start?

So, what does an organisation’s Learning & Development team need to do, to put this in practice?

Start Small (pun intended) — Rather than propose an institution-wide overhaul, start by securing the support of a small group of stakeholders, and use it to get corporate leaders’ buy-in.

Involve the TRAINER — Interactive Nano Learning never REPLACES the trainer & the educator, and we should work with in-house (or external) trainers to repackage learning content into a series of bite-sizes. Remember that the human brain works well with packs of threes, so that might be a good number to reach for, to keep training digestible, and show a progression path.

Reach the LEARNER — The average person today touches his/her phone more than 2600 times per day. So embrace technology that can help to deliver your training content TO YOUR LEARNER. Hence, a digital platform might be your best bet.

Ultimately, it is all about letting our data guide us. Does this new form of nano learning help deliver content in a better way?

​Hence, it’s important that we set very specific milestones and desired end-outcomes, so that we can measure effectiveness, which will help us secure buy-in to extend the framework to more parts of our organisations.

A good way to start may simply be to take 1 specific training module, like a new-employee onboarding programme, and break it down into a bite-sized format.

This Nano Learning format can be sent to the new hire ahead of them joining your company, and contain key information that they need to know: Start date, who to report to, dress code (if any), things to bring/prepare for etc.

Then when your new employee shows up on Day 1, they at least have some knowledge in their minds, and helps ease them into the new environment.

Talent is the most important resource that every organisation has.

It takes time, effort and costs to search, interview, recruit and hire every new team member. If employees leave because they feel they are not being trained properly, the re-hiring for the role hurts the cost by explicitly adding to firm hiring costs, and implicitly by dampening morale (and increasing workloads) of team-mates who stay.​

So it’s in every organisation’s interest to train employees properly all throughout their journey with the firm.

​Interactive Nano Learning can be a big help in making this training bite-sized and on-demand, better delivering the requisite content and skills to members of your team.​Don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself…​

​ArcLab Pro is a Software-as-a-Service web tool and platform that empowers organisations to build Interactive Nano Learning modules that can be easily distributed to teams to help them onboard and upskill.

ArcLab Pro provides easy-use templates, learner analytics, everything you need to effectively train your team with Interactive Nano Learning. There’s no software to download or install, no lock-in periods, no minimum number of learners.

A seasoned mid-career professional in her 40s recounted her recent experience applying to a few Public Sector roles in Singapore. To her surprise (and dismay), the hiring organisations requested for her educational qualifications all the way back to her GCE O-Levels. Without this information, she could not submit her job application.

Juxtapose this anecdote against the Singapore’s government’s exhortation to continually upskill and keep our knowledge current. The official message to employers and society (which we agree with):

Don’t view academic qualifications as the marker of success, embrace lifelong learning, be open to new career possibilities and opportunities that may come our way.

So the same government pushing citizens to move away from sole reliance on academic qualifications, still asks for these very qualifications when recruiting for public sector positions. It is especially strange that academic grades are still required in an application process for a mid-career position.

Returning to my anecdote, that mid-career individual’s O-Level results has zero bearing on her career performance, where she has proved her mettle through her 20 years of work experience. So there should be no reason for the job portals in question to demand this information as a mandatory submission. Importantly, getting that applicant’s O-Level results will not help the recruiter from assessing the applicant’s suitability for the position.

There are 2 ways to view this:

A trivial IT implementation issue, which can be fixed easily with a line of code to make the request for academic grades non-mandatory.

Part of a bigger public sector mindset-change issue, and needs to be addressed at its roots.

If we take the second view, then Public Sector hiring stakeholders should work together to remedy it more holistically.

The Public Sector is a large ship that takes some time to change course. While political and public sector leaders make the big-picture pronouncements, it takes time for that change to filter downwards and operationalised. Realistically, hiring frameworks and systems need some more time to be adjusted.

​Yet adjust it must, and we offer several suggestions for Public Sector employers (and employers in general) to consider, to speed up this change.

1. Never use grades as a non-negotiable filtering tool for prospective candidates.One of the contributors previously helped with a Public Sector project to to review post-graduate scholarship applicants. There was a particular candidate whom we assessed to be a poor fit for the scholarship programme (among other drawbacks, he was unable to speak nor articulate his views clearly). Yet the Public Sector body requested to “upgrade” him to a pass, SIMPLY BECAUSE he had a Degree with First Class Honours.

There ARE valid reasons for academic qualifications to be provided for specific jobs, e.g. medicine, accounting, professional engineering, especially for entry-level or early-career positions. In such situations, paper qualifications are useful as a minimum standard to prove basic technical competency.

In other contexts, e.g. roles where more analytical skills or communication skills are required, academic qualifications or grades are hardly useful to assess candidates’ suitability.2. Make a more considered effort to PROPERLY PROFILE job requirements.Employers (both Public & Private Sector) can start by quantifying the hard skills required for the role but also design better filtering mechanisms to assess candidates on the soft skills needed to execute the role effectively, e.g. a well-designed questionnaire or work-tests to suss out values / aptitudes that current top performers of the role possesses and hire following that pattern.Work-trials (which our firm uses) are also a good alternative way for Employers to assess candidates’ competency and softer skills, such as communication skills and teamwork. Work-trials provide the same opportunity to the job applicant to assess suitability of the Employer and their comfort in working with potential colleagues.WE HAVE SUGGESTED AN IDEAL SCENARIO.

The above will take skill, effort and courage(!) to translate into hiring frameworks. There will also need to be periodic reviews since skillset requirements change over time. One key challenge is how to quantify and effectively communicate the soft skills and “x-factor” required for a role into an advertised job description, and craft it into an interview / assessment framework.

So for a start, a lower-hanging fruit would be effectively quantifying the hard skills required for the role, and work with that as a baseline.

We are conscious that it will take more effort by Employers to operationalise these frameworks (we are Employers ourselves), but we believe the initial hard work will outweigh the time and re-hiring costs to the company of hiring the wrong person for the job, where costs include time wasted from staff turnover and the subsequent re-hiring needed.

In the long run, the hiring organisation wins as it will truly be hiring based on skills profile, resulting in better job hires and benefitting the organisation financially. This contrasts against the usual broad-brush academic qualifications and grades filter of job applicants, which gives the Employer little insight into competency.

Importantly, a move away from a blanket focus on paper qualifications puts the brakes on our country’s systematic discrimination against late-bloomers who may not do so well in the early years of their academic journey. It will also stop the relentless paper chase for academic qualifications’ sake.

There are many stories in industry (which both of us face as Employers) of polytechnic graduates “obsessed” to get a degree after one to two years of working and saving up. This phenomenon may serve to translate to a vicious cycle of more re-hiring and re-training costs for Employers. Such an obsession to get a Government-recognised degree at times could also sometimes totally blinker polytechnic graduates in their career planning, inadvertently leading to poor financial outcomes.

We recall the example of an ex-staff (fresh polytechnic graduate), who after one year of working with the firm, was accepted into a local university to read Electronic Engineering. This individual was working with us as a designer, and was in fact a very good one! However, for the sake of the “paper with the logo of a local university”, he suppressed his own professional and career interests and took on a student loan to do the engineering degree which was not in line with his interest at all. He gave up after one year and enrolled himself into a private university to study a creative discipline that was closer to his real interests. This individual wasted time and money, all for the (misguided) pursuit of a University Degree for its own sake.

The sad truth is that it was perfectly rational for the above-mentioned polytechnic graduate to “aspire” towards a University Degree.

For an employee-track career (unlike in entrepreneurship), university graduates have consistently advanced faster and higher than polytechnic graduates, and their salaries have grown more quickly. So these point towards getting that University Degree, because every Employer looks out for it, and reward those who possess them.

The media sometimes profiles non-graduates that have done well in their careers, e.g. the recent story of non-graduate school principals. Sadly, these stories only serve as the exceptions that prove the rule.

There are not yet any CONSISTENT examples of non-graduates rising to leadership roles in the Public Sector or professional corporate sphere (unlike in the business world where there are consistently a higher percentage of high-performing non-graduate entrepreneurs).

​We look forward to the day where non-graduates in leadership roles are no longer newsworthy.

The other side of the coin is improving the skills-base of job-seekers. To that end, our SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore public agencies have rolled out a plethora of schemes that promote the continued improvement of indviduals’ skills to remain employable.

Flagship programme SkillsFuture was launched as a national lifelong learning movement to provide Singaporeans with the (quote) “opportunity to develop ourselves to the fullest, achieving skills competency and mastery”. The programme is intended to tangentially complement our traditionally rigourous (and perhaps ruthlessly efficient) academic education framework.

As of Feb 2018, ~300,000 individuals have utilised their SkillsFuture Credits for upskilling courses. So from a numbers perspective, there IS take-up, especially in infocomm technology (according to the Agency), which represents the jobs of the future, and which our economy lacks in our talent base.

From a scan of new programmes being offered by our tertiary and vocational learning institutions, the direction appears to be right. But only time will tell.

For now, the jury is still out on the effectiveness of SkillsFuture, as this will need more years of data. We will need to track end-outcomes, i.e. are employers now able to find the right fit of talent, and in sufficient numbers, to meet workplace needs, even as the advent of new technologies create new “industries” like e/m-commerce and fintech. These have required new skills and created demand for certain jobs, even as they in parallel create labour-efficiencies and reduce demand for other jobs, often structurally.

I believe that more thoughtfully-curated learning paths are required to train deeply-competent professionals in all disciplines. These will presumably need to be effected in collaboration with our tertiary institutions, which should be like the US or Israeli institutions that do not preclude non-alumni from participating.

We caution that SkillsFuture must not become a marketplace of entry-level courses, or we risk never being able to produce an adequately high-value and highly-trained workforce.

Nano-Credentials: Adding a Skills-based alternative / complement

As outlined, there are strong calls for a Skills-based framework to complement or serve as an alternative to academic qualifications. We believe this can be framed into a coherent accreditation framework, which we coin “Nano-credentials”

On this front, Singapore has its Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) which recognises skills and competencies of participants in approved training programmes.

There are also competing disparate verticals. For example, individual industries and associations may also provide their own form of accreditation. Tracking and recognition of such training and competency is less straightforward. Learners may also have to justify the courses undertaken to current or would-be employers.

Since no-one is presumably “ashamed” of our qualifications, I question if is there a better way to track and populate ALL our qualifications, achievements, skills into a “central database” for individual to “allow access” to selected parties, e.g. totally public, or only to companies one applies to for jobs etc.

In terms of tracking qualifications — should we also move away from just tracking only formal degrees and certifications, and are we able to create a centralised (or de-centralised(?)) Nano Credential framework that consolidates and maps skills that individuals have learnt from bite-sized courses which are contextual and on-demand?

I believe the answer is yes, especially as technology continues to improve. There are providers with technology that can help to coalesce and VERIFY all training and certifications centrally (or “de-centrally” — blockchain perhaps(?)).

The more able frameworks can also provide ways for individuals to assess current skills competencies and suggest upskilling pathways towards a desired goal, e.g. Head Chef at a leading hotel in 5–7 years. and work backwards from the desired end-outcome and provide recommendations to the individual.

Conclusions

Our belief is that the traditional ways of hiring are outdated. We particularly frown on the antiquated practice of would-be employers demanding for educational qualifications and grades, especially for mid-career positions.

I believe there are better ways for individuals to manage and provide their skills and qualifications to parties of THEIR choosing, through a consolidated skills assessment and accreditation framework.

The key goal that employers should aim for, and put our money and hiring decisions behind, is to hire based on skills rather than qualifications or grades. These need to be built into recruitment systems and job portals, and the philosophy OPERATIONALISED at the hiring manager level.

The Public Sector is a major employer in Singapore. Walking the talk sends a strong message to other employers and the job-seeking public that it is serious about “alternative pathways to success”.

​I have faith that it can, and we’re ready to play our part.

Visit ArcLab to find out more about how we’re helping with Lifelong Learning and Skills-based hiring.

How fun to build AND learn | “A little boy playing with different colored legos” by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

​Singapore’s Budget 2018 Speech (where the Finance Minister announced the future increase of Goods & Services Tax to 9%) had a small section on “Support for Financial Planning”. Within it was a move to “pilot a new financial education curriculum” at Singapore’s Polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education.

Financial Education (#FinEd) was the origins of Oikonopolis, a SimCity-esque learning game we created — that taught teenagers Economics and Personal Finance. We made mistakes (being business newbies), but Oikonopolis’ product cycle and startup journey was a great learning experience.

I went full-time 3 1/2 years ago, drawing on lessons from the Oikonopolis product journey to build a full-fledged EduTech business. We adopted 3 key principles as we designed and developed our learning product:

1. Learning must be ENGAGINGWe need our learners to be engaged in the experience that the product delivers. Otherwise there is no opportunity for any content to be conveyed, meaning there is no learning. A recent IPSOS study revealed that 90% of US employees emphasised the importance of engagement in learning.

2. Learning must be EFFICIENTWith the average human attention span these days under 8 seconds, the learning process in our product can’t be draggy. If not, we lose our learners to distractions like binge-watching movies, or the latest kitten Youtube video.

The key metrics of learning products are not the number of downloads or active users.Instead, the most important metric whether learners have learnt what they’re meant to, by design (or even not by design). Otherwise, nothing else matters.

One of games’ key benefits is the ability to engage its players; many of us recall childhoods where countless hours were spent playing video games.

For years, educators have tried to leverage the power of games to help students learn. Yet game-based learning has often been thrown into disrepute by what is termed “chocolate-coated broccoli”.

E.g., some “edu-games” (a misnomer) might make learners do math problem sums to unlock a game “entertainment level”.

Ultimately, learners are still doing problem sums (“eating broccoli”), and the game is totally redundant in the learning process.

Such games do nothing to promote learning through game mechanics. The game has no need to exist.

I advise all educators to avoid adopting such “chocolate-coated broccoli” games unless the educator’s intent is solely to promote “engagement”.

A digital worksheet does nothing to improve learning, if the original pedagogy wasn’t effective in the first place.

We find that the key to making learning effective, is getting students involved in actually doing something interesting that is related to the topic. This should be built into the design mechanics of the learning product — so the learning is intrinsic through participating in the activity.

INTERACTIVE Learning

The learner’s interaction with the learning tool (as opposed to passively listening to a lecture or watching a Youtube “educational” video) — becomes an important part of the pedagogy — for the learner to internalise the lesson or concept taught.

Take Math: A good example is the learning game “Slice Fractions” (by UluLab), which brings learners through a prehistoric game world. Through clever use of slicing lava and ice (SLICE Fractions, geddit? =), the learning game introduces them to the relatively abstract and cerebral concept of parts of a whole, aka fractions. A truly effective learning game. See the results for yourself!

Slice Fractions | UluLab

Or Financial Literacy: Arctopia: Bryan Gets FinEd(FINancial EDucation) by Innervative Learning lets the learner make financial decisions while throwing them life’s curve balls. It makes the learning realistic and the lessons immediately contextually applicable to the learner. Yay for financial goal-setting; nay to impulse buying!

Arctopia: Bryan Gets FinEd | Innervative Learning

These are just 2 examples where well designed pedagogy is applied into an interactive product, and successfully takes the learner through the journey and helps them internalise the learning.

I also need to stress the importance of the EDUCATOR, who takes on the role of facilitator and helps the learners make meaning of what they have just experienced.

These learning games (and more) are available on TeacherGaming Desk, EduTech visionaries from Finland, whom we are pleased to collaborate (and have become friends) with. #SinFin =)

​“INVOLVE me & I learn”

We encourage all educators and workplace trainers to think about how best to involve your learners as they go through the learning process, and how to make them learn interactively.

Ultimately, this interactivity concretises the learning for them, helping them to learn better and makes your job easier too.

This is true whether you are an academic teacher, or a workplace educator.

We’ll end with a short story of how Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, learns. Salman believes in “mastery learning”, spending hours to:​(i) observe the subject (and master) in practice,(ii) read about the subject,(iii) talk to other experts,(iv) solve problems on the subject and work on projects(iv) think and ponder more questions and solutions,(v) consult experts again.

p/s: We’re excited to let you know that WE HAVE LAUNCHED ARCLAB PRO!ArcLab Pro is a Software-as-a-Service web tool and platform that empowers organisations to build Interactive Nano Learning modules that can be easily distributed to teams to help them onboard and upskill.ArcLab Pro provides easy-use templates, learner analytics, everything you need to effectively train your team with Nano Learning. There’s no software to download or install, no lock-in periods, no minimum number of learners.

​12th August 2016 was a proud day for The Little Red Dot. Singapore’s Joseph Schooling made history at the Rio Olympics, winning our first-ever Olympic gold medal.

Schooling won the Men’s 100m Olympic Butterfly Final in an Olympic record time of 50.39 seconds, beating world-class swimmers including swim legend Michael Phelps — the most-decorated-Olympian. Ever.The Same Starting LineSchooling’s win was the result of years of dedication and hard work, not to mention sacrifices by his parents and supporters. His training honed his innate talent and skill, and made him stronger and faster, culminating in his (hopefully 1st of many) Olympic triumph.

Yet despite all his effort, if Schooling had swum the race where his competitors were given a 10-second or 10-metre headstart, it’s unlikely he would have prevailed. Neither would he have won if his competitors were given motorised fins attached to their feet and Schooling was forced to swim with a weight tied to his waist.

Schooling won his Olympic gold medal in a FAIR RACE, where every competitor started at the same time (barring time differences reacting to the starter’s horn), swam the same course length, with no extra tools except what they were born with, and honed through training.They say Life is a RaceUnlike in sports, we don’t start life at the same starting line, nor run our race with the same resources. Some have more to work with, or “privilege”, which can help them run faster and further, and get higher in life.

This theme is not new but has recently taken hold of public consciousness again, in the US as well as Singapore.

Scions of the well-heeled and well-connected mostly continue to do better than their peers (should they even be considered peers?). Realist theory dictates that players in power can rewrite rules of play to continue favouring offspring and descendants, and preserving the status quo. It’s a virtuous cycle for those at the top, and a vicious cycle for those at the bottom.

Of course, while we should not ask for equality of outcomes, most of us believe in equality of opportunity. But the truth is opportunity is not equal.Privilege entrenches privilege?I grew up being taught that one’s standing in life wasn’t fixed or pre-determined. Many friends and people I know had humble family circumstances, yet went on to good careers in corporate, civil service, the military. Some founded start-ups, pursued academia, sport or music, became top engineers, scientists, lawyers…

The most remarkable story is that of a chap I met while working in London - a managing director of an investment bank covering our account (I was the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s London-based Portfolio Manager) — with the humblest of beginnings — he was the son of an African goat-herder, did well in school, worked hard, got a job in London, and rose the corporate ranks.

The son of a goat-herder!

In my simplistic view, so what if we don’t start at the same starting line? We can still run fast and go far. Sometimes faster and further than someone starting further ahead.

I simplistically thought it was all about choices. Luck plays a part, but in general we could improve our standing in life, if we only made GOOD CHOICES. We could make the choice to study harder, work longer, harder, smarter, “network” more… We could be anything we want in life that we set our hearts on, and we had the same opportunities as those higher up the ladder — the essence of the Singaporean / American / {insert country} Dream.

I had several impassion-ed arguments with the missus on this, who told me (in nicer language) I was a fool to believe that everyone CAN make GOOD CHOICES to progress in life, that the same opportunities were open to everyone.

​The reality she wanted me to see is not everyone has the OPPORTUNITY to make good choices.

Children in the 3rd-world have nowhere near the same opportunity to make the same choices as children in privileged Singapore.

​But I kept thinking back to the goat-herder’s son… and what about that Kenyan’s son who became US President? Or the English teacher who couldn’t get a KFC job and now runs one of the world’ largest companies?

I’d like to have the opportunities to make the same choices you make too. | Photo by Jessica Mulder on Unsplash

A Mile in their Shoes

I’ve since realised that I, and probably many others did not have enough awareness of the specific situations people “without privilege” faced. Often, there is judgment that one struggled in life because one made bad choices. We frame their situations through the lenses of our own VERY different experiences and contexts.

This judgment borders on arrogance, perhaps elitism as a result of having gone to different schools, and living within very different social strata. These all goes to further entrench the differences that are dividing our societies within and without.

Edugrow is not a pro-bono tuition agency. Instead, it aims to work through mentors to help these children build aspirations, character and important life skills like financial literacy (yes!). One of the programme’s key objectives is to brighten and magnify the dreams of these young ones, to bring them beyond their present surroundings which may not be too uplifting.

Through Edugrow, I got to know a young boy (let’s call him “H”), with whom I spend 1–2 hours with every Monday evening.

It was hard in the beginning. One job hazard of being a founder is the tendency to view everything as “problems to solve”. I had pigeon-holed my mentoring of H in that framework and perhaps got a bit too analytical about his family background, problems he was facing in school, why the current intervention activities he joined may not be helping etc. I chaffed (internally) at his academic performance, school attendance issues, staying up late playing computer games, why he was eating dinner so late, why he spent all his money on snacks, why he wasn’t doing his homework etc.

While my intentions were good, I had framed the situation within MY OWN context. Even though I did not express my negativity (I hope), I had inadvertently adopted a judgmental mindset, which surely wasn’t benefiting H.

I realised later I had missed the point of what I was there for. My “brief” is not to tutor H or solve his problems. It’s simply to be his friend.

H was not a problem to “fix”.

H is a PERSON, a genuinely nice boy, whose first thought always went out to his family whenever he received something nice, a responsible kid who helped his mum take care of his younger siblings when she was at work, who was always carefree and positive, always smiling (even though he was often distracted — but then again who isn’t these days).

​H had severe family constraints, not of his own doing. He had to help cook dinner, he had to take care of his younger siblings, he had to juggle many things. H was mostly doing the best he could, with the knowledge and resources he had. He did not have the OPPORTUNITY to make what in my opinion were the “good choices”.

I have since come to enjoy my time with H a lot more, and hopefully am now able to be a better influence.When we meet, H and I often cycle (his choice), chatting while we ride. He’s started to open up about issues he faces, what he is thinking about, and I am honoured that he is choosing to share them with me.

I try not to “offer advice”, but to just nod and ask questions, and hopefully help him to figure out his own way.

As part of our mentoring training, we were taught how to encourage the kids we work with to talk, and turn problems brought out into brainstorming sessions where they provide THEIR OWN answers. It is a mindset shaping move. After we manage to do this a few times, we will hopefully be able to internalise this within the kids.The next step is to scale up ambitions: If the ambition is to be a cook, could (s)he think about what type of cuisine, what skills to learn and master, how to progress, so that there are no dead-end paths and vicious cycles downwards.​The journey is still in its infancy. But I am walking it with H with a much more positive viewfinder. Hopefully he allows me to walk with him for a long time more, and I am helping in some small way.

Is Education still the “Leveller”?

I look at this from 2 angles:

1. Education for the “privileged”The most fundamental thing to be educated is the fact that one is “privileged”, and others are not. If you have that realisation and want to help bridge the gap, you should first also understand the very different contexts that people who are very unlike you face.

A good way is to help out in programmes likeEdugrow, and importantly, not be judgmental.There are many other organisations that do good work that you can help. Googling should help you find those in your local area, though I’d like to mention 3 in Singapore that I’m personally aware of:

(i) CampVision — Empowerer of marginalised youth, founded by a superwoman who is a Hunter of Heads in her day job, and Shaper of Minds the rest of the time.

(ii) EDIS Cares — CSR initiative that works with underprivileged children, and is advised by another superwoman (exited founder, now angel investor, and mother of 4[!])

(iii) Advocaid — Platform that advocates for those in need through crowdfunding. Founded by a Professor who knows the swimming analogy above very well.

Go to their websites and see if something fits what you can contribute. The easiest thing to do is “click donate”, but if you are able to, please also think about donating time and skill.

If you’re unable to volunteer, at least educate yourself in the contexts our underprivileged friends face, and why making “good choices” (in conventional terms) can sometimes be very hard.

Simulations like Spentare great for adults to learn this, while learning games like Life of Bryan (iOS & Android) can help privileged children understand the lives of those not as fortunate as them.

And hopefully there might be a future opportunity to help when your schedule opens up.

2. Education for the marginalised

They say education is the greatest leveller. But traditional education systems and methods often do not work for those at the very bottom, for various reasons which I will talk about in a future piece.

​Hence, at an organisation level, we have been researching a better way to deliver skills-based education and training to those most in need.

​Our work is still in its early stages, but we are thinking about ways to best use our Nano Learning methodology (bite-sized, on-demand, just-in-time digital learning) — currently being used in the workplace, to help the less privileged.

Can we EFFECTIVELY combine education, tech and HEART to uplift lives at scale? | ArcLab

Our work has 3 prongs:

(i) Researching and refining our Pedagogy to best teach the skills that are needed, in the most effective and time-efficient ways (Fact 1: average attention-span now <8 secs).

(ii) Improving our Technology, to make it easy to self-serve content creation for skills training and scale the reach to impact more lives, ideally in the areas of the world where skilled trainers and educators are scarce.

We will still need to lift lives face-to-face, but the omni-present smartphones can be great complementary tools (Fact 2: the average person touches his/her phone >2000 times a day).

​(iii) More importantly, finding the Partners to work with to uplift lives, at scale. Let us know if you know anyone we should talk to.

Back to that 100m race

I’ll end by giving MY answer to the question I posed in the title.

My answer: it is IMPOSSIBLE to win a 100m race when starting 90m behind the other competitors. Unless physics laws change, this is what I’m sticking to.

Thankfully, the race of life is not 100m. It is a much longer race, and if we remember Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare, there is plenty of room to catch up even if you are disadvantaged and start further behind.

​Not all hares in real life are as complacent as Aesop’s. But unlike in the fable, I believe hares can also help tortoises in the race, perhaps through some of the ways I suggest above.

Postscript:​The issues touched on in this piece are complex and multi-faceted, which I only manage to skim for brevity’s sake. It is not my intent to trivialise the challenges many face, and which many are working hard to help with.I’ll be grateful for ANY feedback and suggestions you might have on how I can better help, or how we could work together to further the cause.